Best Practice Recommendations for Teams

Overview

Best practice recommendations and guidelines for using Microsoft Teams.

Table of contents

• When should I use group chats, and when should I use team channels?
• Naming your team
• Team ownership 
• Collaborating with guest users
• Removing one-time meeting attendees from recurring meeting group chat
• Notifications
• Compliance
• Disclaimer

Information

When should I use group chats, and when should I use team channels? 

Users can initiate persistent group chats with colleagues via ad hoc group chats by creating a new chat under the Chat section in Teams and adding multiple users to it. 

Users can also create similar persistent chat spaces, called Channels, by creating a team under the Teams section and adding multiple users to the team. 

Group chats and team channels both allow users to instant message, video conference, audio conference, screen sharing, and share and edit files collaboratively. In many cases, the group chats you can create under the Chat section will be sufficient for many situations. However, if you need to create a space that has granular permissions and controls, creating a team under the Teams section and utilizing team channels for collaborations may be the better route. 

Naming your team

To help create a consistent, structured environment, we recommend using the following naming convention when you create a Microsoft Teams team: O365_<Department>_<Team>

Team ownership 

When creating teams, we recommend always appointing two owners for every team.

This ensures that, should an owner of a team leave the University of Oregon, other owners of the team will be able to continue to manage the team and its associated assets, ensuring business continuity. 

Collaborating with guest users

In Microsoft Teams, UO users can invite users who are external to the UO to collaborate together in Teams. When guest users have been invited to Teams, UO users should be cautious not to share and post sensitive or confidential UO data.

Additionally, you can restrict whether guests are allowed to create, update, and delete channels within your team by going to the Teams section in Microsoft Teams, selecting the three ellipses beside the appropriate team, choosing Manage Team, then Settings, and editing the section beneath Guest permissions.

Removing one-time meeting attendees from recurring meeting group chat

When users are invited to an instance of a recurring meeting, they are not removed for subsequent chat, despite not being invited to further meetings. This also applies to when a meeting is created from a group chat and users not within the group chat are invited. That new user becomes a part of the group chat.

Users can choose to leave the recurring meeting, thereby removing themselves. Permanent members of the recurring meeting/group chat can also remove the user.

1. For the user to remove themselves
   1. Go to the recurring meeting/group chat,
   2. Select the Participants icon, then
   3. Select Leave.
2. For the permanent members, select the Participants icon
   1. Hover over the user you wish to remove, then
   2. Select the X that appears in order to remove them.

Notifications

There are several areas where you can configure the notifications in Microsoft Teams to ensure you receive notifications when colleagues post messages and make updates, or to minimize the number of notifications you receive. 

1. You can configure notifications for 1:1 and group chats by going to the Chat section
   1. Selecting the three ellipses beside the appropriate 1:1 or group chat, and
   2. Selecting the Mute or Unmute options from the drop-down menu
2. You can configure channel-by-channel notifications by going to the Teams section
   1. Selecting the three ellipses beside the appropriate channel, and
   2. Selecting the Follow this channel or Unfollow this channel option from the drop-down menu
3. Finally, you can configure general notification settings by clicking your profile avatar icon in the top right of the application
   1. Selecting Settings
   2. Selecting Notifications, and
   3. Editing this section as needed

If you're still encountering notifications issues, you may need to refer to your operating system's settings:

• Windows
• macOS

Compliance

Microsoft Teams is a service that is part of the Office 365 platform and thus falls under the same Business Addendum Agreement (BAA) we have with Microsoft. 

Disclaimer

We reserve the right to remove Microsoft Teams teams that are in violation of the UO's policies and procedures, in example, the Acceptable Use of Computing Resources Policy: Addendum.